CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Romanello, S., Dervin, B., & Fortner, R. (2003, May). Sense-Making as a methodology to inform interdisciplinary communication of scientific uncertainty of global climate change. Paper presented at a non-divisional workshop held at the meeting of the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA.
© Samantha Romanello, Brenda Dervin, & Roseanne Fortner (2003).

INTRODUCTION:
Sense-Making was used to investigate interdisciplinary communication of uncertainty between scientists studying global climate change. Traditional research in the human dimensions of global climate confirms that there are differences between non-expert and expert understanding of global climate change (Brunn & O’Lear, 1999; Zehr, 2000; Yearley, 2000) and that non-expert and expert perceptions of uncertainty are at the center of this problem. The scientist-public discourse in global climate change involves not scientists as a unified coherent group but scientists representing multiple disciplines. Sense-Making was used in this study because of the difference it mandates on the individual when compared to traditional approaches: to view the internal process of individual understanding of climate change without constricting or limiting the individual to the researcher’s understanding or biases about the situation. Sense-Making, while not often used in the arena of the human dimensions of global climate change and the larger community of the human dimensions of natural resources, appears to be a methodology that can help aid and inform interdisciplinary communication of science.

BACKGROUND:
Zehr (2000) suggests that scientific uncertainty is used by the media to create interest in the topic and to create boundaries between science and the public. Research in the human dimensions of global climate confirms that there are differences between the non-expert (public) and the expert (scientists) understanding of global climate change (Brunn & O’Lear, 1999; Zehr 2000; Yearley, 2000). Differences in non-expert and expert perceptions (thoughts, understanding, use and communication) of the uncertainty of global climate change are at the center of this expert- non-expert problem (Khalid, 1999; Meadows & Wiesenmayer, 1999). Non-experts have misconceptions about the science and risks of global climate change. The cause of these misconceptions is seen as insufficient scientific knowledge about global climate change and inefficient decision-making skills in the face of the “uncertainty” of global climate change.

For the most part, systematic, empirical analysis of the gap of uncertainty is conducted between the public and scientists. The current expert-non-expert research model depicts the public as one group, non-expert and the scientists as another, expert. Nevertheless, the scientist-public discourse in global climate change involves not scientists as a unified coherent group but scientists representing multiple disciplines. While it is assumed that scientists adhere to common decision making processes and common ways of handling uncertainty, there is growing evidence that this is simply not the case. Cultural differences across disciplines seem to be embedded in the training, research, and scholarship of the discipline (Delmont & Atkinson, 2001). Categorized, these differences seem to be related to ontological (the nature of reality), methodological, and epistemological (the nature of knowing) concerns of the researcher and the science (Dervin, 1999). The differences in ontology, epistemology, and methodology across scientific disciplines are apparent in the definitions of scientific uncertainty. The commonality between the sciences is the need to minimize the uncertainty, yet the nature of this uncertainty (ontological or epistemological) and the discourse used to communicate uncertainty in the cultures of natural and social science is quite different.

In the context of integrated assessment of global climate change, natural and social scientists come together to define the issue, present potential causes, solutions, and ramifications to inform government policies. In these settings, scientists who are expert in one field are non-expert in another. Since scientists are seen as being able to bridge the gap between available data and the judgments required by decision makers better than the public (Garling, Beil, & Gustafsson, 1998) but lack the communications strategies necessary to effectively communicate these strategies to the public (McBean & Hengeveld, 2000), global climate change then provides a novel situation of the expert-non-expert model. Global climate change provides a situation where both the experts and the non-experts are considered knowledgeable and efficient decision makers about global climate change yet still possess differences in the kind and degree of uncertainty of global climate change. This problem of how natural and social scientists bridge the gap between their understandings of the uncertainty of global climate change has not been thoroughly explored. This research attempts to investigate the gaps between scientists’ understanding of uncertainty with the intent to illuminate successful communication strategies between “experts” and “non-experts” within the context of global climate change.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
To investigate these differences, the following questions are asked:

1. What is the nature of disagreements of natural and social scientists during discussion of global climate change?
2. To what extent are the disagreements of natural and social scientists related to ontological, epistemological, and/or methodological uncertainty?
3. What are the strategies natural and social scientists use to bridge these disagreements?

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
To investigate differences in natural and social scientists’ communication of uncertainty and the effect of these differences during discussion of global climate change the present study sought a methodological approach for data collection that could successfully discern differences in how natural and social scientists conceptualize global climate change and, in particular, how the ways in which they make sense of uncertainty relate to their perceptions of these differences when discussing global climate change in interdisciplinary groups. The research methodology used in this study is Dervin’s Sense-Making.

SENSE-MAKING:
Sense-Making is defined by Dervin & Frenette (2001) as a generalizable methodology for studying human sense making in any communication context. Sense-Making is the most used approach to focusing on information seeking and use in studies in the field of library and information science and has been widely used in both quantitative and qualitative research in a variety of disciplines, including environmental studies (Dervin & Frenette, 2001; Murphy, 1999; Madden, 1999). In all cases, the applications of Sense-Making have focused in some way on what informants question, think, feel, and/or conclude in particular situations.

Sense-Making Methodology mandates a focus on specific moments of sense-making allowing human beings to be conceptualized as changing as they move through time-space. A primary component of the Sense-Making Methodology is through interviewing. Sense-Making interviews allow subjects to report how their actions, cognitions, and feelings changed as their perceptions of reality changed. According to Dervin, the Sense-Making interview “is self consciously focused not on interpretations per se, but on interpretings, those of the researchers-interpreting interpretations of human-being-interpreting interpretations” (Dervin, 1999, p. 737). The interview process allows the researcher to view this internal process of individual understanding of climate change without constricting or limiting the individual to the researcher’s understanding or biases about the situation. Therefore, a Sense-Making interview can deconstruct the world of the individual without imposing the a priori assumptions of the researcher onto the individual. The Sense-Making interview enables the researcher to pay “empirical attention” to the world of the individual as opposed to the world of the researcher (Dervin, 1999).

Although extremely structured, Sense-Making interviews allow for a series of explanations and multiple perspectives. Sense-Making interviews are in the area between the collective world of research (the noun categories) and the individual world of interpretation (the verbing) (Dervin & Frenette, 2001). Whereas most theories of human understanding create static pictures of the individual from which to generalize, Sense-Making creates moving pictures of the practices individuals use to negotiate their context or situation. The Sense-Making interview assumes that both the nature of reality and the nature of knowing that reality are simultaneously complete and incomplete. Similarly, the interview protocol acknowledges that individuals negotiating this reality are at times ordered and centered, and at other times, as the time and space of the individual changes, chaotic and uncentered (Dervin & Frenette, 2001). Through a series of iterative questions, the Sense-Making Metaphor provides both temporal and spatial anchoring of data by specifying the micro-moment during the discussion where differences in perceptions of uncertainty take place.

THE SENSE-MAKING METAPHOR:
The Sense-Making Metaphor (Figure 1) consists of the:

1. Situation or the time-space contexts within which sense is constructed;
2. Gap or the “information needs,” or questions people have as they construct and deconstruct sense while moving through time-space that need bridging;
3. Verbings sense-making and sense-unmaking of the individual;
4. Bridge or the assemblage of ideas, emotions, attitudes and memories, from the past, present and future moments that the individual constructs to negotiate the gaps and uses to move from one moment to the next; and
5. Outcomes or the information uses or helps and hurts that the individual puts into newly created sense.

These elements allow triangulation on the Sense-Making Moment by structuring the researcher’s dialogue and allowing the researcher to listen to the way the individual negotiates reality (Dervin & Frenette, 2001).

Figure 1. The Sense-Making Metaphor.

SENSE-MAKING APPLIED IN THIS STUDY:
The mandates for interviewing derived from the Sense-Making Methodology (Dervin, 1999; Dervin & Frenette, 2001) which have been applied in this study include:

1. Examining differences in the scientist’s sense-making at specific time-space moments in discussions of global climate.
2. Examining the scientist’s understanding of uncertainty at specific time-space moments in discussions of global climate.
3. Examining the scientist’s bridging strategies at specific time-space moments in discussions of global climate.

THE SENSE-MAKING INTERVIEW:
A Micro-Element timeline interview was used to collect data coded for descriptive analysis along the following dimensions:

1. The nature of the disagreement by academic discipline.
2. The nature of uncertainty by academic discipline.
3. Level of knowledge, level of sureness, belief in global climate change, and potential risk to humans by academic discipline.
4. The bridging strategy used by academic discipline.

This particular Sense-Making interview explores the gaps between natural and social scientists during discussions of global climate change and the users’ success or failure at using their science to communicate their position. In this dissertation, this premise is realized by asking natural and social scientists to describe specific situations in which global climate issues have been discussed and in which the discussions involved disagreements. Figure 2 shows a theoretical example of the interviewing format moving the respondent from the discussion to the disagreement situation where the Sense-Making Triangulation will occur.

Figure 2. A theoretical example of the interviewing format
moving the respondent from the discussion to the disagreement situation.

For each disagreement situation, the following Sense-Making triangulation questions were used:

1. What led to this disagreement?
2. What major barriers or constraints do you see as accounting for this disagreement?
3. What major questions, confusions, or muddles did you have about this disagreement?
4. What were your major conclusions, ideas, or thoughts about this disagreement?
5. What emotions or feelings did you have resulting from this disagreement?
6. Was having to face this disagreement helpful in any way?
7. Was having to face this disagreement hurtful in any way?
8. Were there any other impacts resulting from this disagreement?
9. Looking back at this disagreement were there any ways in which you or the other participant attempted to bridge the gaps in this disagreement?
10. If you could wave a magic wand what would you have changed about the disagreement was handled, things that were not said that should have been said or other things that would have made things go better?

• Questions A and B relate to situations
• Question C relates to the gaps
• Questions D, E and I relate to the bridge
• Questions F through H relate to the outcomes

DATA ANALYSIS:
For this study, the elements of the situations, gaps, and bridges were used in a mixed method design to focus on the nature of disagreement and nature of uncertainty in discussions of global climate change within the scientific community. The disagreeing instance is the primary focal moment of data collection and the portrait of the Sense-Making of participating scientists were developed by induction from their descriptions of these disagreeing instances. Content Analysis of the interviews was conducted by the researcher using a Sense-Making descriptive focus along the themes of nature of disagreement, nature of uncertainty and bridging strategy (Dervin et al., 1982). Themes were coded at the smallest unit of analysis, the Sense-Making instance, which in the context of this research is realized as the disagreeing instance. The disagreeing instances were collected and are anchored at the disagreement situation level. Traditionally data is analyzed at the individual level however Sense-Making methodology allows data to be analyzed at units smaller than the individual by anchoring moments in time and space and acknowledging situational changes within the individual. Sense-Making studies using the across time space units of analysis other than the individual have been successful in assessing difference and predicting behaviors (Cheuk & Dervin, 1999; Nilan & Dervin, 1999). As an individual and the disagreement situation can contain many disagreeing instances the data were analyzed at the individual, the situation, and the instance level to look for consistency across levels. In all cases, the most conservative estimates were used. Inter-rater reliability was established for the coding by randomly selecting 20% of the interviews and having them coded by an independent coder.

RESULTS:
Of the 36 scientists who completed the interviews, 19 were social scientists and 17 were natural scientists. There were a total of 89 disagreements in all: 40 disagreements were described by social scientists and 49 disagreements by natural scientists. The mean number for disagreements was 2.8 for natural scientists and 2.2 social scientists. The mean age of social scientists interviewed was 56 and the mean age for natural scientists interviewed was 50. There were a total of 5 women interviewed; 3 were social scientists and 2 were natural scientists.

Following traditional analyses on non-expert opinion on global climate change, 5-point Likert-scale items were used to assess individual’s belief that global climate change (gcc) is occurring, the level of sureness of this belief, belief that global climate change poses a risk to humans and self-reported assessment of knowledge. Likert-scale items had a Spearman-Brown reliability score of .88 and a split-half reliability of .88.

Using the individual, the disagreement situation and the disagreeing instance as the unit of analysis and looking solely at the Likert-scale items, without controlling for differences in uncertainty or nature of disagreement, data shown in Table 2 suggests that there is no statistically significant difference among natural and social scientists interviewed in belief that global climate change (gcc) is occurring and the level of sureness of this belief. There does however appear to be a difference among natural and social scientists in that global climate change poses a potential risk to humans and their self-reported level of knowledge.

It appears that Social Scientists interviewed appear to be less confident in their level of knowledge with a mean level of knowledge of 3.8 respectively than the Natural Scientists interviewed with a self-reported mean level of knowledge of 4.3. Review of the qualitative data however suggests that Social Scientists differentiated between their level of knowledge of the social processes and the natural processes of global climate change.

Again I’m not trained in climate per se but I’ve worked on climate related problems for 25-30 years. So I’m not expert in that sense as these modelers but I think despite that I’m well informed.

While both Natural and Social Scientists interviewed had a high self-reported level of knowledge, both natural and social scientists commented that there is a need to study global climate change more to truly understand the process.

I think I have a good understanding of it, but I’m also smart enough to realize that I don’t understand everything.

In terms of potential risks to humans, social scientists with a mean of 3.8, felt that global climate change posed less of a risk to humans than natural scientists with a mean self reported score of 4.5. Social scientists appear to qualify the risk of global climate change by comparing the consequences of global climate change to other types of risks.

Oh that’s hard to say. Risk? 4. Is it as great a risk as terrorism or war? Compared with what? It’s a greater risk to the poor than the rich, it’s a greater rich to natural ecosystems than human systems. There’s a lot of dimensions to it.

Natural scientists, on the other hand appear to view the risk of changes to the natural system as to great because they are unknown.

That’s a 5. Because we are vectoring a system that we don’t understand. We are vectoring a non-linear chaotic system and we don’t understand the consequences of these perturbations.

NATURE OF DISAGREEMENT:
To assess the nature of disagreement, 7 dimensions of disagreement were created:

1. Viewpoints on uncertainty: the individual’s willingness to believe without conclusive evidence or the lack of faith in the truth reality, fairness or reliability of the evidence presented;
2. Closed-mindedness and rigidity: the point of view adopted and held by the individual—that is, global warming is human induced; global warming is not human induced);
3. Power differential: the possession of control, authority or influence over others due to their position or rank;
4. Political bureaucracy: the conduct of government and or with guiding or influencing government policy;
5. Economic interests: the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and/or the yielding advantageous returns or result;
6. Value differences: the welfare of human beings; and
7. Disciplinary differences: the special skills or knowledge derived from training or experience.

Using the disagreement situation as the unit of analysis there appears to be a significant difference in the extent to which natural and social scientists view the effects of differences in status and power (t = -2.99, p < .01) and the effects of disciplinary differences during discussions of global climate change (t = -1.79, p < .10). In both cases, social scientists at 50% and 75% respectively felt that status and power and disciplinary differences played a more of a role in the disagreement than natural scientists at 20.4% and 57.1%.

[I have a] Ph. D. in Political Science. Bachelor’s degree is in metallurgical engineering. That’s why they don’t really know how to categorize me. In other words, I’m not really totally social, and they don’t really know how much science I understand. So that’s why I’m accepted, but they don’t know what to do with me. They can’t just throw me out and say, “Oh, he’s social, he can’t really understand our models.” They have to do a little more gymnastics to get around me

Additionally, it is important to note that both natural (100%) and social scientists (95%) reported that viewpoints on uncertainty overwhelming effect the disagreement situations.

The point is that even the scientists don’t really, aren’t really coherent about what they mean. The uncertainty that is attributed to the temperature increase that is the doubling of CO2, from 1.5 to 4.5 degree Celsius. No one knows what that uncertainty means. It’s a not a probabilistic uncertainty. It gets repeated in a mantra-like way. And no one knows what the uncertainties emerging from competing models mean. Like if look at, you talked about the national assessment, if you look at the spreads and all those graphs for different scenarios, what do those mean? What are the probabilities of one versus another? Nobody knows what those are; they are just the result of models. So this isn’t like weather forecasting. Economic and Political concerns also seemed to play a major role in disagreements (natural scientists 67.3% and 67.3% respectively and social scientists at 62.5% and 65% respectively).

NATURE OF UNCERTAINTY:
To assess the nature of uncertainty 3 dimensions of uncertainty were created.

1. Ontological uncertainty: the lack of sureness over the nature of reality and the biological, physical and chemical processes and systems that control the nature of reality.
2. Epistemological uncertainty: the lack of sureness over the nature of knowledge and the psychological processes that determine and define that knowledge.
3. Methodological uncertainty: the lack of sureness over the processes used to study phenomena.

Using the disagreement situation there appears to be a significant difference (t = 2.93, p < .05) in the extent to which natural and social scientists talked about the presence of ontological uncertainty during discussions of global climate change. It appears that natural scientists (57.1%) focused more on ontological uncertainty than social scientists (27.5%).

Almost every scientist in this process that I’ve been dealing with, inside the process, in my opinion, is honest. My frustration is that they’re not always thoughtful about the objectivity/subjectivity divide, but they genuinely believe that they should advise the world in what they consider to be the closest approximation of ontological truth.

It is also interesting to note that both natural (100%) and social (95%) scientists appeared to talk about epistemological uncertainty more than ontological or methodological uncertainty during discussions of global climate change. It is apparent that both natural and social scientists feel that they need to study global climate change more before definitive answer are made. Nevertheless, this feeling of additional study may be tied into policy making decisions or the vested interests of the scientists.

So the uncertainty plays a big part at the end of the day but its not a big part of the debate. We all acknowledge that there’s tremendous uncertainty. Now, what do you do about it? That’s where you sort of break out of the science. Scientists didn’t debate that there’s not uncertainty; but the policy maker at the end of the day would say, “gee, with all of the uncertainty what should we do”? You and I and the others would say, “well, what we need to do is fund more research and minimize the uncertainty.” In other words, give me the money and we’ll go talk about it in another five years, when I’ll tell you that there’s even more uncertainty.

BRIDGING STRATEGY USED:
To assess the bridging strategies used 7 types of bridging strategies emerged from the data.

1. More Knowledge—Maybe more knowledge of really what it is he was trying to say.
2. Scientific Methods—Well we did bridge it with the hypothesis testing.
3. Using Public Forums—No other than through the media.
4. Removing Disciplinary Boundaries—I would take down disciplinary boundaries and give everybody way better communication skills.
5. Third party mediator—We attempted to bridge it by having a mediator.
6. Consensus building through International/National Organizations—Yes. One way, which I think, has been effective. Is to use various national and international bodies to examine the facts.
7. Eliminating politics—I think this is once again, removing the politics of it.

Using the disagreement situation there appears to be a significant difference in the extent to which natural and social scientists talked about using scientific methods (1.88, p < .10), consensus building through international and national organizations (2.82, p < .05) and removing disciplinary boundaries (-2.50, p. < .05) as bridging strategies. It appears that natural scientists at 40% and 14.3% respectively felt that scientific methods and consensus building through international and national organizations were appropriate bridging strategies, whereas social scientists at 50% felt that removing bridging strategies where appropriate bridging strategies.

This difference in opinion about bridging strategies across the community of scientists may be due to the power structure within the global climate change community.

The first one is a recurring theme . . . what typically transpired in these meetings was that we’d listen for what seemed like interminable amounts of time about general circulation models and atmospheric science issues related to them, on and on and on, and the problems with them and why they worked well or didn’t work well, and they don’t work very well, and then at the end of this long discussion they would turn to, say, a social scientist or economist in particular and say, “Oh and by the way, you guys can predict technology 100 years in the future, right?” So the presumption was that with their billions of dollars, they could do the important stuff, and the rest of us with very little share of the pie produce equally good information that was arguably just as hard or harder to do, but those other disciplines were being allocated virtually none of the budget.

DISCUSSION:
“Part of the problem (with the global climate change discourse) is failure to differentiate among public knowledge of specific scientific information, the science process (methodologies), and social dynamics of the scientific community” (Zehr, 2000, p.86). As most scientists are well-aware, disagreement and continual study is part of being a scientist.

Having disagreements is always part and parcel of being a scientist. I would always invite you or anyone else to come to a major meeting of the American Meteorological Society where scientists are presenting raw research in a science format, and you would be stunned by what you would see. I mean, its just one person after another comes to the conclusion that we don’t know a darn thing about the climate system and we have to learn a lot more before we could ever start projecting things out. That launches off into different kinds of questions, it really stimulates the field tremendously. But it may hold back certain policies. I mean there are definitely people who can’t wait to adopt policies on this or that or another thing and the science of uncertainty often gives our President and others a reason not to act now.

Disagreement in science when it’s based on the science is natural and healthy. I have often proposed something others objected and then was pleased to note that they were right. It clarified the issue and that’s traditional. So you expect disagreement.

In science you commonly get two or even more groups taking different sides on an issue then you settle it by careful long-term research.

Nevertheless, the structured debates of the 1980s and 1990s seemed not to reveal the process of scientific debate but to hide the deeper issues of disciplinary differences playing a role in the science of global climate change.

Well I suppose one of the impacts that comes from these big disagreements is the possibility of writing more grant proposals to get more funding to investigate. It’s very much in the interest of the scientist to whip up these debates, and argue that there’s some very important questions regarding “whatever” and that suddenly makes proposal writing even easier. Always, one of the things that happens, is that when someone comes along and shakes the community, that funding agencies want to get in on the debate. That’s where the action seems to be over a short period of time. Inevitably, it translates into more research money. It isn’t obviously a bad thing. Finding disagreements about greenhouse debates has lined a lot of climate labs with gold.

About three years ago, a lot of people unilaterally without discussing it quit agreeing to go to forums in which we debate the right wing. We said well go debate Jeremy Irons from Green peace [sic] if you want to do that because they are out of the other end of the spectrum, neither side is interested in the scientific facts so go yell and scream at each other. At least they can exposed their own biases. It wasn’t a conspiracy on our part to just no longer debate those kind of folks but to just say hey look we’ve had it, we’re going to try to provide venues which honest communication of what we’re up against is possible, rather than the trashing of evidence. Which is what’s been going on in these hearings. So in a sense that marked a change in our attitudes.

In the late 80’s [sic] and the early 90’s [sic] I would say the most common question was do we not know enough to prove that climate is changing that humans are causing it and because of all the uncertainties there should we even be thinking about the studying ecological impacts or societal response or mitigation measures. So I think that was the common “is there enough weight of evidence to say, “act” and that we should even consider what the actions could or should be. I think that common questions changed in sort of the mid-90’s probably after the second IPCC report came out in 1995 with their discernable human influence. The question then changed from is it happening to the kind of “so what” what does it mean, and is it even worth addressing.

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OTHER MATERIALS BY THESE AUTHORS ON THIS WEB SITE:
For Romanello,
See: http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistromanello.html
For Dervin,
See: http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistdervin.html
For Fortner,
See: http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistfortner.html